One aspect relates to separating, and/or reducing in size, particles of solid material via heating with microwave energy.
Throughout the world, there are quantities of minerals combined with other material. Often, attempts are made to separate materials. For example, ores are treated by mechanical, chemical, or thermal processes, or some combination thereof to liberate marketable minerals from waste minerals (called gangue).
In many mining districts enormous quantities of mineral reserves are not utilized because mining and/or mineral processing to recover the marketable constituents is uneconomical. Most of this material is not utilized because separation of the desired minerals from the gangue minerals is too expensive. Additional quantities of otherwise desired minerals are locked to gangue minerals and are rejected during mining or mineral processing and are sent to stockpiles or tailing basins.
Billions of tons of mined and unmined minerals and additional materials now disposed of in stockpiles, tailing basins, and landfills would be utilized if processing costs for separating gangue from valuable minerals were significantly reduced.
For these and other reasons, there is a need for the present embodiments.